Refocusing U.S. Public Diplomacy for a Multipolar World

Second, technology can provide improved techniques for telling the United States’ story. Even the most credible and authentic narratives can fail if they are not persuasive or never reach their intended audience. Leveraging new technologies to enhance the storytelling context of U.S. public diplomacy, elicit emotional responses, and achieve persuasive outcomes will be vital for outperforming competing narratives from China and Russia. This can range from artificial intelligence to virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, or infotainment.

Third, technology can aid in countering state-sponsored disinformation and influence operations. U.S. public diplomacy cannot operate on its own merits alone. It must leverage emerging technology to identify, track, counter, and discredit narratives and false information spread through Chinese and Russian active measures. This requires interagency cooperation through initiatives like the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), as well as public-private partnerships with the tech sector, like Facebook’s election integrity program, to employ rapid alert detection networks to identify artificial amplification, deepfakes, content coordination, etc. The European External Action Service (EEAS), for example, employs a rapid alert system to detect disinformation and coordinate multistate responses through the Emergency Response Coordination Centre, EEAS Situation Room, G7 Rapid Response Mechanism, and NATO.

Who Is the Audience of a Refocused Public Diplomacy?

To enhance the competitive edge of U.S. public diplomacy over the next century, the conceptual focus on “foreign audiences” should be broadened operationally to include a range of foreign actors: corporations, nongovernmental organizations, cities, diasporas, influencers, and more. The Department of State’s Office of Global Partnerships is a model for partnering U.S. government staff and resources with nontraditional partners across business, philanthropy, and community organizations that could be mirrored within the Office of Policy, Planning, and Resources (R/PPR).

Additionally, U.S. public diplomacy suffers from a lack of engagement with the domestic public. While Americans frequently see headlines about how China and Russia challenge the United States abroad, they often lack substantive knowledge of how the U.S. government is working to compete in this shifting world order. As public opinion influences both political representation and appropriations, better engaging and informing U.S. residents about the efforts and successes of public diplomacy is crucial for securing public support, congressional recruitment, and greater influence in interagency cooperation.

The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 allowed for greater transparency and access to materials intended for foreign audiences but maintained restrictions on their use for influencing domestic U.S. public opinion. Further revisions to the act should consider eliminating outdated policies and rethinking U.S. public diplomacy’s domestic engagement strategy.

Achieving Public Diplomacy Goals in the Coming Decades

Refocusing U.S. public diplomacy’s purview requires a whole-of-government approach, interagency exercises to expose resource gaps, and designing a grand strategy that outlines responsibilities and costs associated with expanding capacity. This requires five key first steps to compete in the coming multipolar world. These span leadership, cooperation, evaluation, purpose, and training.

1. Consistency in Leadership and Strategy

U.S. public diplomacy has been self-sabotaged out of the gate for over 20 years by a lack of consistent leadership. The position of the undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs (R) was vacant 44 percent of the 22 years between 1999 and 2021 (over nine and a half years), with nine congressional appointees filling the office the other 56 percent of the time (just over 12 years). This lack of institutional continuity has prevented the development of an organized and coherent strategy for implementation across the Department of State, let alone the entire U.S. government. This inconsistency has contributed to China and Russia outperforming the United States in the information and influence domain over the last two decades. If the United States is serious about competing with China and Russia in this space, the White House must prioritize quickly filling this critical office with qualified personnel. However, given the broken Senate confirmation process, creating a role that bypasses the lengthy process would be beneficial.

That said, in the United States, the executive branch cannot bypass the legislative branch if reputational security advancements are to be achieved. If the Senate confirmation process cannot be streamlined, it is critical for congressional leadership to better address authorizations and appropriations related to public diplomacy.

In contrast, leaders like Xi Jinping in China and Vladimir Putin in Russia can arbitrarily redirect national resources at will.

2. Centrality of Leadership in Interagency Cooperation

U.S. public diplomacy during the Cold War was successful because the USIA was the centralized leader of U.S. government information and influence efforts, with direct access to the White House and the National Security Council. Today, the lack of influential leadership in public diplomacy weakens the U.S. government’s effectiveness in the information domain. Edward R. Murrow, the late director of the USIA, recommended that “public diplomacy be in at the takeoff of foreign policies, not just at the occasional crash landing.” The absence of a prominent agency leader also reduces attention from senior-level policymakers in both the executive and legislative branches.

There is no point in creating a new USIA, as that would be an unhelpful bureaucratic reorganization. However, giving the White House and the National Security Council authority over a singular organization or agency, as the USIA once had when it participated in White House cabinet and National Security Council meetings, would clarify, harmonize, and centralize U.S. government efforts, increasing the efficiency of interagency cooperation and resource allocation. Positioning the GEC as the dedicated central hub, for example, would be ideal, as it is Department of State-focused but enjoys more operational cooperation and buy-in from the national security and intelligence communities than R/PPR. This would require official interagency memoranda of agreement directing other agencies and departments to be accountable to the GEC. It would also necessitate more funding—for example, liaisons to the GEC, GEC liaisons to the tech world, and additional billets within the GEC for analysts, supervisors, and possibly their own software programmers.

Another way to achieve greater impact is by doubling down on performance measurement in U.S. public diplomacy. This would allow practitioners to demonstrate its effectiveness and value as a security tool to policymakers in Congress and the White House. The work done by R/PPR’s Research and Evaluation Unit is the first step in institutionalizing performance measurements across U.S. public diplomacy. However, it is important to stress that psychological and sociological influences are slow processes. No social science programming can yield comprehensive results in a matter of weeks, months, or even years. Policymakers need to understand that public diplomacy measurement and evaluation is a cumulative process, with trends revealing themselves over the course of years, decades, or even generations. Assessment expectations within an annual budget cycle, for example, will do little more than illustrate the fact that individual and societal influence is far from instantaneous. There must be a willingness to consider the compounding evidence of comprehensive mixed-methods research over time.

3. Efficiency of Dollars Spent

Furthermore, the United States does not need to outspend China or Russia in this domain; instead, it must allocate resources and efforts more efficiently. Audience analysis and segmentation are ideal methods to achieve this. The key is to win over moderate and persuadable audiences, so the greatest resources should be focused on countries and regions not already aligned exclusively with China or Russia. This should begin with countries of strategic geopolitical interest to the United States that are being actively courted by either country. For example, Panama was one of China’s first Belt and Road Initiative partners, and the influx of Chinese investments influenced the outcome of Panamanian elections and legislative votes in favor of China’s economic and security priorities over those of the United States. Similarly, the popularity of the Arabic-language RT (Russia’s international news network) has influenced public perception of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in North Africa and the Middle East.

While an in-depth strategic analysis by regional experts is required to develop a comprehensive list of countries of strategic geopolitical interest to the United States, numerous natural-mineral-rich countries in the Global South are being lobbied by both Chinese and Russian public and private sectors. Some key examples include the following:

• Africa: Zimbabwe (platinum group metals and lithium), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (copper, cobalt, lithium, and petroleum), Mali (iron, lead, chromium, nickel, lithium, and uranium), Guinea (iron and uranium), Mozambique (iron, titanium, graphite, and copper), South Africa (iron, platinum, manganese, and uranium), and Zambia (copper, cobalt, and platinum group metals).
• South America: Bolivia (petroleum), Chile (lithium and copper), Mexico (iron, copper, and zinc), Peru (iron, manganese, and copper), Jamaica (iron, copper, and zinc), the Dominican Republic (copper, nickel, and zinc), Guatemala (iron, nickel, and zinc), and Panama (access to the canal).
• Asia: India (iron, manganese, graphite, zinc, and copper), Uzbekistan (petroleum, uranium, copper, and zinc), Indonesia (nickel, cobalt, and copper), Kazakhstan (manganese, uranium, iron, copper, zinc, and petroleum), Kyrgyzstan (iron, manganese, petroleum, and zinc), Malaysia (iron, manganese, copper, and bauxite), and Tajikistan (iron, uranium, petroleum, and zinc).
   

4. Purpose as Informer or Persuader

Reinforcing institutional mission sets is also vital. The goal of U.S. public diplomacy might be compared to counterinsurgency’s purpose of winning the “hearts and minds” during military conflict. In the Information Age, public diplomacy should aim to build the United States’ credibility with global audiences. USAGM has spent decades cultivating a reputation for credibility with its various networks, serving as a transparent and objective news outlet. The agency needs to retain its editorial independence to remain a recognized international source of fact-based journalism.

As Nicholas J. Cull argues, “international broadcasting is powerful but works best at arm’s length.” This necessitates codified barriers to operational interference from the White House or Congress. Politics must stay out of USAGM for it to remain attractive to foreign audiences as a reliable source of information. On the other hand, as a central branch of the executive government, the Department of State should remain the primary tool of political advocacy in advancing the United States’ narratives to the rest of the world. The Department of State is the central hub for engaging, through various soft power means, in persuasive communication that articulates the attractiveness of U.S. policies and engagement.

5. Advanced Training and Professional Development

Lastly, communication is a skills-based profession, yet most foreign service officers and many public diplomacy officers are not highly trained communication practitioners. The State Department should model high-level training and strategically oriented professional development programs with academic partners, like the Defense Department’s program for mid-career public affairs officers (PAOs) at San Diego State University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies. This curriculum provides PAOs with advanced theoretical knowledge and practical skills in campaign planning, implementation, and measurement. It also trains PAOs to serve as strategic counselors to commanding officers.

Experienced public diplomacy officers need similar advanced training and professional development to build industry-led skill sets in campaign planning and implementation, program development, audience analysis, measurement, and evaluation, and counseling senior foreign service officers, ambassadors, and policymakers.

Options for collaboration with academia include specialized programs in public diplomacy at institutions such as the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Oklahoma State University’s School of Global Studies, and George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. Another option is to pair the Foreign Service Institute and R/PPR with academic and research partners, facilitated through the Office of Global Partnerships’ Diplomacy Lab program.

As the U.S. government seeks to contain its adversaries’ influence and geopolitical impact, it is critical to consider lessons from the twentieth century. Public diplomacy was a novel tool that helped tip the Cold War stalemate in the United States’ favor. The White House and Congress must prioritize investments in public diplomacy’s capacity to become a competitive tool in the international information ecosystem and reconsider what twenty-first-century public diplomacy requires for effective global strategic communications. The undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs (R) and USAGM’s lack of centrality in the national security community will continue to handcuff U.S. government efforts if inaction persists. Meanwhile, the United States will watch as China and Russia continue to build alliances across the globe and fortify their legitimacy as superpowers.

Daniel F. Runde is a senior vice president, director of the Project on Prosperity and Development, and holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Phillip Arceneaux is an assistant professor of strategic communication at Miami University.

This report is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct sponsorship contributed to this report.